Jordan Murray

Biography

Jordan Murray has established a career in many diverse areas of the music industry in Australia. He has been one of Melbourne’s first call trombonists over the past 15 years as well as composing and arranging for a wide variety of situations. Throughout his career, Jordan has always been passionate about music education which has led to his position as Lecturer in Jazz Studies at Monash University.

Originally a graduate from WAAPA, Jordan studied at Berklee College of Music with Hal Crook, Phil Wilson and Herb Pomeroy. As a freelance musician performing live concerts and various music festivals, Jordan’s performance career also includes work in television, musical theatre and studio recording.

Woody Herman trombonist & Berklee faculty member Phil Wilson invited Jordan to study at Berklee College of Music, Boston, where he studied with Hal Crook, Tony Lada & Herb Pomeroy and was awarded the Slide Hampton award. Whilst in the USA, Jordan performed with Aretha Franklin and studied at Dave Liebman’s IASJ summer school, performing at the JVC Jazz Festival in New York.

Since moving to Melbourne in 1996, Jordan has performed with many local & international artists such as John Farnham, Tom Jones, Kylie Minogue, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Joss Stone, Ricky Lee Jones, Mavis Staples, Paul Grabowsky, James Morrison, The Australian Art Orchestra, The Black Arm Band, The Bennetts Lane Big Band & Tony Gould.

Jordan currently performs with the Paul Grabowsky Sextet, Tamara Murphy’s Modular, The Tim Wilson Quartet, The North East Collective, John McAll’s Black Money, The B Sharp Big Band & Gianni Marinucci’s Birth of the Cool Nonet.

Jordan was a member of the group Ish Ish that performed at the 2001 Umbria Jazz Festival & Finland’s Pori Jazz festival. Jordan was also a founding member of Sam Keevers’ Los Cabrones which held a 12 year residency at Melbourne’s famous club the Night Cat.

Jordan has also worked extensively with musical directors & producers Chong Lim & John Foreman as both a performer and arranger for television shows such as Dancing with the Stars, Australian Idol, It Takes Two, Young Talent Time & The TV Week Logies and recording projects with artists including David Campbell’s Swing Sessions 1 & 2, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.